bigs need seasoning

Last week we covered the existing offers in the primer series for 2021 with Guards, Wings and Bigs. Tuesday my Wish List series kicked things off with the Guards and hit on the Wings yesterday. Today, we’ll take a peek at some Bigs that I’d like to see the staff pursue moving forward.

As a refresher, here is my general blueprint for designating bigs:

Big—has adequate size/length to protect the rim and/or rebound and/or not get bullied by traditional bigs in the B10; can ideally finish as a roll-man

File This Under Pursue Immediately

Akoldah Gak

• Height/Wingspan/Weight: 6’11/7’2/205
• High School/AAU: Blair Academy (NJ)/Pro Scholars Athletics (EYBL)
• Current Composite Ranking: 152(!)
• My End of Summer Projection: 4star/Top 50 Overall

Scouting: I simply have no explanation for the mainstream ranking here. Gak is a giant human being with tons of talent/athleticism that plays HS ball with multiple D1 prospects (Jaylen Blakes and former Michigan target Jabri Abdur-Rahim) in a heavily scouted area while suiting up for a prominent AAU club. I preface my physical profile scouting by saying that most kids listed at 6’11 are actually 6’9 in shoes. Akoldah is every bit of a legit 6’11 and looks absolutely massive on the court. The measurements above were taken from the 2019 Nike Elite 100, so its possible he’s grown an inch and added wingspan since then. Athletically, he has everything you’d want from an NBA standpoint let alone the college game. The blow-by displayed at the 1:12 mark in the film is nothing short of insane for a kid of that size. I don’t know that I’ve seen more than 10 HS bigs display that level of burst over the last 10 years. Once again at the 1:25 mark he attacks a closeout with the fluidity and acceleration of a very athletic 6’7 wing. He moves at an elite level, simple as that.

He’s extremely fluid handling the ball in transition or the half-court. He changes directions with euro-steps and spins with such ease that its hard to fathom. The spin-move he utilizes to avoid a charge at the 0:27 mark is a level of body control, spatial awareness, ballskills and athleticism that simply isn’t fair for a 6’11 center. As if the above wasn’t enough, he shoots the ball like a legitimate guard/wing. Most bigs have a slow/deliberate release that looks a bit awkward. Akoldah is extremely comfortable as a catch and shoot threat with a one-motion shot that is unblockable at the college level. I have no clue what his 3% was as a junior, but that shot looks damn good. He’s an explosive finisher off 1 or 2 legs and embraces contact consistently. On the defensive end he has the look of an elite rim protector that changes how the opposition approaches the game. He projects as an instant-impact player at the college level with some serious pro potential. Offensively he’s the epitome of versatile. With the attributes to be an elite roll-man/lob threat, a face-up option that blows by bigs from the wing/elbow, a floor-spacer in Pick-and-Pop action and a rim-runner with strides like a deer in the open court. Defensively he has the lateral agility to switch on the perimeter and the length/verticality to give you 2+ blocks per game. His combination of size/length/skill/athleticism is scary and he can be a complete game-changer on both ends of the court assuming he’s got everything together upstairs. Assuming that’s the case, I’d take him over any big that we’ve offered and he might be my number one overall target considering the lack of depth at center.

[Hit THE JUMP for a well-known and another “Who Dat”]

In defense of 2015 [Fuller]

The Question

Ace: There's no question this basketball season was a strange one. Michigan headed in with many question marks but high expectations, started off the season with a couple quality wins and a very competitive game against one-seed Villanova, went on to lose head-scratchers against NJIT and EMU before getting run off the court by Arizona, lost their two best players to injury, and then saw flashes of great promise from several players that didn't necessarily show up in the team's final record.

Let's try to make some sense of this. What about this season would you consider a success, what was a failure, and how did it affect your expectations for the program moving forward?

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Failures

Adam Schnepp: I've placed my hands on the keyboard and taken them off three times before I typed this, but not making the NCAA tournament is a failure. I'm hesitant because of the stark negative connotation of the word "failure."

Anything that leads to more Dakich isn't so much "failure" as "awesomesauce with an oh darn." [Fuller]

This is a failure that happened because of course it did. As the hockey guy I'm used to watching the type of failure where you have a team loaded with talent that underperforms and shoots itself in the foot until there's nothing left. Nothing. Not even, like, a bloody remnant that doctors could reconstruct. Just, poof, gone. This is a completely different kind of failure, a failure in which there are explanations (NBA attrition, injuries that led to a lineup Tom Izzo would find weird) that make sense and extend beyond "this is just what we do now."

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Dave Nasternak: Michigan Basketball isn't in the same place that it was seven years ago (one huge mess, but with John Beilein). Its not even in the same place that it was 3 years ago (bummed about a tournament upset but only a round or two away from its ceiling). After seeing the faces of the players and coaches in that hotel in Atlanta two Aprils ago, this program expects to succeed at the highest level. National Championships, Final Fours, Sweet Sixteens, NCAA Tournament games, Big Ten Championships (regular season and tournament) are all accomplishments that this program expects to be competing for every year.

And that's the right answer. As Michigan players/staff/alumni/fans/constituents... that's why we are connected with this University. Now, we don't consistently get the freshmen that Kentucky and Duke get every year, so some of these goals will be a little too lofty from time to time. But I am willing to bet that if you asked people in and around the program if they were supremely disappointed with not obtaining some (most, all) of these goals, they would not only verbally say that they were, but that you would also be able to see it on their faces. That's just what the Michigan Basketball program has achieved.

[after the jump: no more dancing. Around the question I mean. Lots of the other dancing (not That dancing)]

xkcd. it's funny because SCIENCE okay?

As the Rigelians informed us, basketball it turns out is the universe's favorite sport. Of the trillions of basketball leagues worthy of broadcast, the most incompetent is Lockeceles VI's "Internashunil Assosiation of Basketball Playig and Shoving Sharp Objects Into Our Eyes [sic]," [sic] best known for their ruling that the Targavian Turnips should have to play an entire season hopping on one leg and bent sideways after a local columnist accused the Turnips' frontcourt of not hustling. Fortunately for the players, Targavia was a city entirely made up of chiropractors, so nobody's life was ruined. The season was of course a disaster.

If the NCAA just claimed the refs were getting too expensive we would have believed it.

The second most feckless basketball league in the universe is, of course, Earth's "National Collegiate Athletic Association," which recently challenged the IABPSSOIOE[sic]'s title by issuing a one-year (effectively life) suspension to an injured player who tested positive for a recreational, performance-reducing substance that everyone uses.

You may ask what were they smoking at the time, but that would appear rather obvious.

Alas, the burden of picking up the pieces shall fall upon the TV camera crews at Crisler, who must find a way to shoot the games without broadcasting all of those extended middle fingers, and the Michigan Wolverines Basketball team, who'll have to figure out how they're supposed to rebound anything. And it shall fall upon the MGoBloggers to inform you how that will go down:

The cagers are suddenly without a front court. Has Michigan slid back to pack for now or is this all just a setup for the Beilein Little Shooters Magnum Opus? What's your take on Donnal? Can we do this without becoming a study on Bielfeldt anatomy?

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